Linux VDA: Supporting KDE and Qt Applications

There are a lot of different desktops/window managers for Linux. The two main “families” of window managers based on either Gnome or KDE. Gnome is written using the GTK+ (GIMP Toolkit) libraries and KDE is written using the Qt libraries.

Testing this is not as simple as testing Gnome and testing KDE. The test matrix is a little more because you can run applications written using the GTK+ libraries with KDE window manager. Similarly, you can run applications written using the Qt libraries with the Gnome window manager.

In the v1.0 release, we ran the window manager (i.e. Gnome) under the same user as our other services. This had the unintended side-effect of preventing KDE running and Qt-based applications not running under Gnome.

Hence, the Tech Preview and v1.0, Linux VDA supported the Gnome window manager and applications which uses the GTK+ libraries. This means it supported 1 of 4 possible combinations for the two main families of window managers, which was limiting.

For example:

Window Manager

Application type

GTK+-based

Qt-based

Gnome

✔

✘

KDE

✘

✘

For v1.1, we have addressed this and the Linux VDA now supports all of the combinations for the Gnome and KDE – giving the end-users a wider range of window managers and applications they can use with the Linux VDA.

For example:

Window Manager

Application type

GTK+-based

Qt-based

Gnome

✔

✔

KDE

✔

✔

There is another minor detail that also grows the test matrix that is not mentioned above and that is the different versions of Gnome and KDE. For the Linux distributions supported by Linux Virtual Desktop, we tested and support Gnome 2.x, Gnome 3.x and KDE 4.x.

We hope this explains this new Linux VDA v1.1 functionality and gives you some insight into what the Linux Virtual Desktop was been working on since the v1.0 release.

To read more from the Linux Virtual Desktop Team, make sure to check out all of our posts here.